reply, she sent copies of her hortative missive to a circle of influential friends, among them journalists and politicians. Senator Barbara Boxer, of California, wrote the President endorsing the idea, as did a woman in Connecticut named Martha Stewart, and, finall late last month, he wrote back a letter signed "Sin- cerel Bill" that had the flavor of a polite brushoff "Thanks for your suggestion about planting a kitchen garden on the White House grounds. Since I took of- fice, Hillary and I have been interested in the idea of growing fresh herbs and veg- etables here at the White House. But we decided that an informal kitchen garden would not be in keeping with the formal gardens of the White House and the historic planting guidelines developed in the 1930s. Instead of having a kitchen garden on the White House grounds, Hillary requested that the National Park Service plant and maintain a vegetable garden on the roof of the Executive Res- idence. In addition, the East Garden has been planted with garden herbs that our chefs use for our meals, and the National Park Service maintains a compost recy- cling pile at our greenhouse." Alice waited a couple of weeks, con- sulted members of her brain trust, and the other day dispatched another letter. "I apologize for being so insistent," she wrote-a toning down of a phrase that in an earlier draft read, "While I do not wish to seem to be hectoring you and Hillary"-"but I have the impression that you and Hillary may have made up your minds about a different garden than the one I have been proposing." What she envisions is not "an informal garden" but "a national monument" that could fit right in at Versailles, with espaliered fruit trees, edible topiary, the works-an aes- thetically proper but fully functional kitchen garden. Nor does Alice seem willing to settle for something hidden away on the roof-where, amid "security enhancements" (anti-aircraft artillery?) that the Secret Service acknowledges but declines to comment upon specificall a small collection of potted tomatoes, squash, cucumbers, and sweet and hot peppers is now being cultivated in a manner that would not meet the De- partment of Agriculture's proposed new organic-growing guidelines. President Clinton wasn't flagrantly dissembling when, in his letter, he re- 46 THE NEW YOR.KER., MAY 29, 2000 :' i.: :1. Þ, . '. :,;:O"_" .^ " " f',,'# , :: .'to ;." :.(:/ '"'{ ('. 1>:" J} "-};:. , " :. . .. 4 . i- ' .,,*, ,. þ' ": "'., :" . ' .t>. :/> .. ...' . .,; .,, '.":;} . ';.., . , . '.. .þ::;: . ":'(' : , "': '4 "'., ^ , '.' ::-. . . ' '- .! .,:; , . '.. -l- ""'. :, . , ",..... . ^' . . . . t ,. ;. '" ."';, ,.' ..'- . ^. :'...... .'.i :;;.,;. . Lunchroom window, New York, 1929, by Walker Evans. ferred to the compost recycling moni- tored by the National Park Service, but he neglected to mention that the pile is a couple of miles from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. The executive compost heap Alice fantasizes about would itself be a monument, of proportions sufficient to provide a higWy visible and aromatic backdrop during outdoor press confer- ences and photo ops. Is there room on the White House grounds for such an improvement? Well, there's more than eighteen acres to work with, so it could presumably be squeezed in. Does sufficient time remain during the Clinton Presidency to come up with a suitable design and plant the seeds? It's a prospect the Commander-in-Chief can contemplate while enjoying that lush and symbolic piece of vegetation, in- stalled during the Bush Administration, which somehow did comport with "his- toric guidelines"-the White House putting green. -Mark Singer DEP OF RECALL A FAMILIAR FACE ON THE WALL OF THE MET P aula Vlachos says that she watches · the Charlie Rose show "religiousl " but, even so, she never expected to wit- ness anyone rising from the dead dur- ing a broadcast. One day earlier this month, though, during a segment about the Metropolitan Museum's recent Walker Evans retrospective, Vlachos suddenly saw on the screen the face of her father, who died more than forty years ago. "I jumped out of my skin and screamed, 'That's my dad!'" Vlachos, who is sixty-five and works for an elec- trical contractor, said last week, speak- ing by telephone from her office, in Astoria, Qyeens. The picture that Vlachos had seen was one of Evans's candid shots of anon- ymous New Yorkers going about their business; taken, in 1929, it shows Vla- chos's father, Nicholas Sclavakis, sitting in a diner beside two other men, gazing out the storefront window. Sclavakis is wearing a fedora and has a mouthful of sandwich, while one of the other men wears a straw boater, and the third is bareheaded; they all look as preoccupied as any would-be workingman might have at the start of the Depression. Vlachos wanted to know where she could buy a book containing the print, so she called the Met and was put through to Jeff Rosenheim, the curator of the show. "She said she had been to that diner with her father when she was 0 a child," Rosenheim said. "I knew from (/) the artist's papers that Evans believed it to be a diner on Forty-fourth Street, op- posite Grand Central, and she told me 2 that her father used to go all the time to a diner on Forty-fourth opposite Grand Central." The man on the far right in the picture is one of Sclavakis's best 8